TO THE EDITOR:
The faculty in my department are tired of the insinuation that because one of our colleagues and one of our staff behaved unethically, we are all unethical professors who haven’t done our jobs.
We as a faculty weren’t responsible for Nyang’oro and Crowder’s behavior, we don’t condone it, and we certainly don’t emulate it.
It is shameful that professor Nyang’oro led classes that required minimal academic work, and that a staff person seems to have, on several occasions, changed grades or submitted grade forms without professors’ approval.
What happened is unconscionable. But it is not representative of an endemic problem in our department or our discipline.
When you call for yet further reform of our department, you suggest that our collective work is at the root of this scandal.
None of us who remain in the department had anything to do with it. Faculty who have dedicated their lives to this university and its students should not be branded as guilty by association.
I see students when they are invited into Barbara Anderson’s home to have dinner with a visiting scholar from Africa, or to Eunice Sahle’s house to celebrate the life of the first female African Nobel laureate.
These are not faculty members who take their responsibilities to students’ intellectual development lightly. The dedication that my colleagues have shown to this University community should not be negated by the terrible misdeeds of two individuals.
Lydia Boyd
Assistant professor
Department of African, African-American and Diaspora Studies
